Perhaps no contemporary artist has captured the spirit of the mid-century modern design movement better than Josh Agle, known as Shag.

Since the early 1990s, Agle has painted plasma screen size vibrant tableaux of nattily attired men mingling with sleekly-coiffed women in mid-century architectural wonders. The brightly colored paintings and prints are reproduced across media including prints, books, housewares and assorted merchandise that both celebrate and satirize the mid-century era.

“I always wanted to comment on the culture and I also wanted to tell stories,” says Agle, who lives in Lemon Heights, an unincorporated area nestled between the cities of Orange and Tustin. “Even though visually (the paintings) are inspired by the ’50s and ’60s, I want to add a darker humor or an irony to the paintings that is more contemporary.”

The artist is something of a cult figure in the mid-century-minded Palm Springs art scene and his profile has risen in step with Modernism Week, a biannual event which takes over the city with its house tours, talks and parties. Agle will be holding court Saturday, Oct. 19 at an opening in his gallery boutique The Shag Store as part of Modernism Week Fall Preview, which runs Thursday, Oct. 17 through Sunday, Oct. 20.

The world inside Shag’s art is populated with denizens of pop culture: The Beatles play a small house party and Andy Warhol looks slightly bemused as he hangs back at his famed studio The Factory, watching (and filming) as the scene unfolds. Agle occasionally pops up in his own paintings, and much like the Warhol figure, he stays in the background.

Agle’s Shag brand is nothing if not meta, but he was in the game long before social media made culture mash-ups disposable artifacts. The nom-de-plume Shag is itself a mash-up of the last two letters of Agle’s first name and the first two of his last name.

The Shag line of art and products, which range from socks to clocks, are sold both in his Palm Springs and West Hollywood stores, and hold appeal across demographics. “Children like his (Agle’s) work because it reminds them of cartoons, adults reminisce about a fun, maybe happier time, and many older adults are reminded of the illustrations that were once predominant in magazine advertising of the ’50s and ’60s in publications like Look magazine,” Agle’s business partner Jay Nailor, owner of The Shag Store, wrote in an email.

The Shag brand in some ways came tailor made for the Instagram era: The Shag Stores regularly host opening parties, where guests don Hawaiian shirts and Day-Glo dresses, or as was the case at a recent opening, a mini Kiss army showed up to emulate the band featured in a new series of prints.

“The events at the Shag Stores are meant to resemble the parties in my paintings,” Agle said.

Agle has also caught the eye of well-heeled art buyers (his “Leisure Principle” sold for $60,000 in 2018 according to Nailor) and brands that wade in the same pool of kitsch and nostalgia such as JetBlue and Disney have commissioned the artist. Agle won’t work with companies that aren’t a strategic and philosophical fit for the Shag brand. “If (Agle) isn’t excited about the idea, we’ll simply pass on the project,” Nailor wrote.

Since 2003, Agle has created paintings for Disney Parks and Resorts, which have been repurposed as prints, coasters, glassware, and clothing including tiki-laden Mickey Mouse ears, which debuted this summer at Disney World. In 2017, Agle gave the Shag spin to the famous cantina scene from Star Wars, showing his affinity for the spaces the Disney characters move in.

“When Disneyland approached me, I wasn’t interested in painting Mickey Mouse,” he says. “I wanted to make the theme park itself a character.”

On Aug. 7, Disneyland released a series of products based on his painting “31 Ghosts” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion, just as he created pieces in honor of the park’s 55th anniversary in 2010.

Agle’s career has dovetailed nicely with the mid-century modern craze, which took off in the early 2000s due to the style that “Mad Men” reintroduced with a vengeance. Agle, a Sierra Madre native, says that for some, his paintings gave them an entryway into the era, while others use them to complement the look they’d already adopted.

“I was lucky I was painting right around the same time people became interested in mid-century design,” he says. “I know people got into my art because of mid-century design and I know it worked the other way as well.”

Agle found that just as his fans’ aesthetics morphed due to his paintings, his own lifestyle was shaped by the Shag universe he’s created.

“Early on my paintings were aspirational,” says the artist, who considers Palm Springs his second home. “I was painting places I wanted to be and the kind of people I wanted to hang out with. (Now I’m) able to run around in those circles. In Palm Springs in one evening I might see two or three things that would inspire me to make a piece of art.”

Shag’s retro style was arrived at somewhat accidentally, an outgrowth of his affinity for the mid-century furniture that he picked up on the cheap in the 1980s, combined with the tiki culture he absorbed as a child in Hawaii. The artist’s early works were featured at Billy Shire’s seminal La Luz de Jesus gallery in the 1990s, a showcase for the underground movement known as lowbrow.

But these days Agle shares more of an affinity with other artists-turned-brands such as Jonathan Adler, who redesigned The Parker Palm Springs Hotel, another favorite haunt of the Palm Springs crowd. The two sometimes co-host receptions (Adler’s Melrose Avenue store is down the street from Shag’s). But unlike Adler, who markets housewares at Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdales, Agle won’t sell his original products anywhere but The Shag Store.

Just as he controls the action in his paintings, Agle wants to keep the reins on the Shag brand.

Shag

What: The artist will host a reception and cocktail party at The Shag Store in Palm Springs to celebrate the release of his latest print “The Odd Bird”

When: 7-10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19

Where: 745 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs

Admission: Free

Also: Shag will celebrate the fourth anniversary of The Shag Store in West Hollywood on Nov. 9. He’ll be exhibiting prints and original works at La Fiambrera Gallery in Madrid beginning Oct. 25 and releasing new art and products for DesignerCon in Anaheim, Nov. 22-24.

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